Last year, a construction site in Hayes Valley, SF opened up an awesome portrait mural of the master alien Sun Ra. The Sun Ra Arkestra plays often around the corner at SF Jazz, keeping the interstellar beams alive from the atoms of far away realms. I frequently bike by this spot, and a new second floor is once again blocking the view of our favorite man from outer space.
And the SRA in once again heading into the San Franciscan audial realms, playing The Chapel on Valencia St. at the end of February.
I strongly recommend taking a deep dive into live Sun Ra. There are hours of audio concerts on the YT streams, and my atoms have been rearranged several times by letting the Arkestra flow into to my inner/outer being. See you out there, beyond the sun!
The main takeaway from this show is that I now have to see Greep again so that I can actually hear more than 2-4 songs with him shredding his guitar.
A good friend in North Carolina saw Geordie Greep play months ago on this tour and said this man was the future of guitar-based music. I think he compared Greep’s sound and visions as “Zappa meets Steely Dan meets King Crimson.” Maybe that’s what I thought after a first listen to Greep’s “The New Sound”.
I didn’t know what to think after a first listen. The disparate styles did not appeal to my ears, but I couldn’t get the music out of my head. Greep’s album confused me and left me unsettled. But my NC amigo insisted that I see him live if he came to San Francisco. The tour did have a date here in SF, but the early-May date was already sold out months in advance. I relistened to “The New Sound” and the songs, with surreal lyrics, strange singing, and poly beats eventually sank in. I got it, and decided to see the live show.
Since I had to buy a ticket in the second-hand market, I was doing it only at face value. My friend Adam here in SF says that the day of the show is the best time to pick up tickets for face. Hell, he even shows up when doors open and usually scores a cheaper/face value ticket for cash. I like to have the tickets months in advance, but was going to go for it for the Geordie Greep show at the Great American Music Hall.
On the day of the show, I got a ticket at face value no problem on StubHub. It was on! Going solo, I decided to text highlights to my amigo in NC, but that was distracting and annoying. And he would be asleep by then. Instead, I took notes.
This show turned out to be a mess for Greep. He said that his shows in SF were cursed, that the amp he bought in New Orleans on this tour, to replace the one that was blown that first show in the US, was cursed. He was angry with Guitar Center.
SFGate covered it here (scroll down a bit for the Greep story) and here at last are my notes of what went down. Here is the setlist for the night. For my notes below, I have cleaned things up a bit, but left what I heard and saw intact. Whether or not it was Eddie or Andy who brought his personal amp to the show for Greep to finally play the last few songs, he was indeed an angel!
My Notes from the Geordie Greep Show at The Great American Music Hall, May 6, 2025
Left house as Es listened to Zappa’s “Valley Girl”. A no-problem 15 minute to walk to GAMH.
Younger crowd here. Not a total sausage party. The person at the box office said “an Evening With” on the marquee means no opening act for the night. 8:00pm and setlist just dropped at mics.
8:16 start. Greep already messing with gear. Mostly has back to audience. Roadie is on stage. Greep takes guitar off. Band still jamming.
Narration about Guitar Center and blown amps. Plural. Saying that there’s a curse on the tour. This blown amp replaced a blown amp in New Orleans on the first night of tour. And he blew another amp in SF in the past.
Greep singing as show goes on. Guitar back on. Sounds like crap. More amp narration. Greep comparing this house amp to one he used to play in garage as a kid. He takes guitar off again.
Greep on percussion during bad-ass bass solo. There is jamming. Greep just put setlist in coat pocket. Ending the show early? No guitar means not following setlist?
Kids digging this one [I cannot remember which song]. Scatting solo. “Cazy days and wild nights in San Francisco “.
Roadie back on stage. Looks like he’s setting up amp #3? Greep is dancing. Bass player just hopped onto floor to dance with people.
Guitar is back! Mosh pit to 70s blues rock sounding tune.
Greep thanking guy who brought the amp. “He’s an angel”. Making up song for him. The guy is in balcony just above stage left. He takes a few bows and we all applaud him.
Type 1 jamming lol. Heading into second hour.
Amazing solo facing crowd. Crazy chords. Audience is rapt for piano solo. Over at 10:40. Encore? No. Greep thanking Andy again for amp.
If the Pandemic cooperates, Phish will continue their 2021 4.0 tour into the Fall. Starting Aug. 13, the band plays Atlantic City, and then will be at Harveys Casino in Stateline, NV starting Aug. 31. The Fall tour ends with a Halloween run in Las Vegas.
Ask anybody and they know that I love gifiting creative items to unsuspecting people. Over the past 20 or so years, I’ve given away stickers, posters, buttons, stencils, and other fun items. The fist sticker I ever made was the “Creativity Begins Within” for 2000 Burning Man, and I gave them all away. I love the concept of “Free” espoused by the San Francisco Diggers, and Burning Man is onto something with the ideal of giving it for nothing in return.
Then there is the ancient concept of Dana, practiced for centuries, which can be about giving just to feel the goodness of the act while expecting nothing in return.
When I saw that u/churchisweird and his wife were giving away poker chips (with fun band quotes and show details) at all the Phish shows in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, I got excited. A few Phish subredditors had already asked about the Harveys shows in Stateline, but u/churchisweird and his wife weren’t going to the shows.
Phish redditor u/churchisweird and his wife designed some great chips to give away at 7 different Phish shows! I was inspired to join in on the giveaway fun, and made two more sets for the Harveys NV shows.
I DMd him, told him I loved his idea, and said I’d give away chips for Stateline/Harveys if he wanted to make any. We started chatting, and he told me that he actually bought the chips from an online company (Chiplab). He wouldn’t be making any for Harveys. Along with the chip-making site, he also shared a great Phish resource for word searching songs to get money-themed hits within Phish’s original and cover lyrics.
We both agreed that giving away something to the community we love to be part of was a great idea. The good vibes of the idea kept piling up for me, and I happened to have some free time to poke around on Chiplab. After some trial and error with their simple graphic design interface, I had two chip designs for the two-night run at Harveys. I made sure to use a color and some Phish lyric quotes that u/churchisweird hadn’t used, and I ordered several dozens to get printed for my own free giveaway.
The 2021 Phish Casino Tour poker chip giveaway is complete! Now phans can possibly snag a chip from every run in a gambling town/city, and my two designs make 9 total chances to collect them all… if you’re lucky. 🙂
The chips were delivered this week, and are now ready to hand out to the lucky few in Stateline. I’m quite excited about this and hope that the shows don’t get postponed due to the current Delta wave of the Pandemic. My plan is to dress up as a Phish-themed croupier (ahem, a GROUPier, lol), with a vest, a bow tie, and my funny fish hats, and wander around a bit each day of the show to hand out some chips. I’ll take what’s left to the show each night.
The table is open and ready for play. Put your money where your mouth is and drop some goodness in your pocket. Time to feel that tingle that gifting gives, being present with each moment where a phan smiles, laughs, or wanders off a bit confused. Whatever happens, it’ll be all right….
Set up in what was literally a no man’s land months before (they even swept for landmines), I posed at a long remnant of the Berlin Wall with the official Roger Waters program (how did they make it so fast?) before going into the gates of the event.
I guess the Pandemic caused me to miss the 30th anniversary of Roger Waters performing the Wall in Berlin as promised. So I caught this year’s after seeing a post up on the Internet. I would say this was one of the craziest live music experiences I’ve ever had. The fact that I had an actual ticket, mailed to a travel agent in Greenville, SC, helps make the whole thing feel more real.
Thank you, Richard Young, wherever you are!
I still have that program, along with the t-shirt (XL, doubt I’ll ever wear it again) and the paper mask hand-out they gave us to hold up at a point in the show. In good timing, I just visited back East and got to pull out my memorabilia from the show. My mom has always kept articles for me to read, so one of these photos has the clippings she took from the two local newspapers (both AP reports, but one was longer than the other).
I recently bought a used CD of the show, but must admit I haven’t watched the video in a while. After finding this link below, I got sucked into the amazing spectacle once again and watched it all the way through. This version of “Mother” is the go-to version I always listen to when the ear worm hits. And it is still quite powerful to hear the masses roar when the staged wall comes down.
After posting the stub on Facebook, I decided to write out the adventure that started when the Post Office delivered my subscription copy to Rolling Stone. Once the travel agent made that phone call to NYC (or it could have been London), everything worked out and we lived to tell the tale. I’ve lost touch with Virginia, the person I knew who, prior to this Berlin weekend, let me crash under her sink in a small dorm room in Innsbruck. I am glad she and her friend (cannot remember much about her) had the patience of a mountain to get through that crazy weekend!
This very lucky adventure all started with a subscription to Rolling Stone, where I read a short article about this concert. I knew someone from college who would be in Innsbruck, and she and a friend were down to go. I had no idea how to work out a way to get to the show, and that puzzle piece was found when my mom suggested I talk to a travel agent she knew. I think his name was Richard Young. He was a “let’s make it happen” person, so got on the phone with a ticket broker and literally lied his way into getting me 3 tickets for the event. He booked a hotel room in Berlin, early enough to get one of the last rooms available (1000s were sleeping in the parks and train stations the night of the concert). He even got us train tickets with reserved seats (the train was packed to the ceiling when it arrived in Berlin). I knew this show was going to be insane, so we got there early and grabbed a spot by a sound tower. Good thinking, since most of the crowd got pushed around on and off during the now free-for-all show. That was about 200,000 people! The two people with me were not used to going to shows, but understood the “do not move so we can go to the toilet and find the tower to get back together.” The sea of pushing scared them, but folks around us were so nice and helped protect them. The show was an insane spectacle, complete with a full marching band and dozens of “drones” building the wall. When the wall came down, the joy of the masses was powerful. We were exhausted afterwards and had to catch a train back to Innsbruck very early the coming morning. We walked over 100s of people sleeping in the train station to get to our train. We slept well that day back in quiet Innsbruck!
I’m in the process of saying farewell to StencilNation.org. The book is officially out of print (Manic D Press has corrected me, stating that the fourth printing is still in print) and the website was designed (by Antonio Gomez) in the heady days when Adobe Flash was du jour. With the rise of mobile phones and HTML5 (and the whole responsive site mania), it is time to retire the Stencil Nation site and redirect to Stencil Archive (the mothership).
While backing up Stencil Nation one last time, I saw a random mp3 file on the top level of the site’s backend. I clicked listen and it was a Cross Currents interview I did while on the book tour. It was a great experience and it actually riled up a listener who felt that all public art was vandalism. Fun!
I guess I was worried about taking up too much memory back then. Good thing the cloud revolution caught up and now memory is practically infinite. The interview mp3 is on this site’s cloud, and WordPress even allows super easy linking via its “Add Media” button.
Here’s my original post about the interview:
Had a great bike ride over to the KALW studio near McClearen Park this morning and interviewed with Penny Nelson for Cross Currents. The engineer, a bike commuter, told me another route that sent me through the park and then down Mission St. in the Excelsior District. Found some stencils along that ride home! They posted the show early so here’s the goods. Fast forward in about 3 and a half minutes to hear my segment. About 10 minutes long total.
Woe be the artist who doesn’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Who would expect to have that song become a YouTube sensation, or that illustration to end on on the cover of a magazine? FaceBook and Google+, etc. may weasel in on your rights too, if you post things on there. After the success, what do you have if you haven’t covered your ass?
